At UCSD, experts to explore new strategies for the war on drugs

With casualties mounting and victory nowhere in sight, is it time to chart new strategies in the nation’s battle against drug abuse?

On Friday, UC San Diego will host “Rethinking the War on Drugs and U.S.-Mexico Security Cooperation,” a conference dedicated to finding practical solutions to an intractable problem. Speakers will include a former White House adviser plus policymakers, researchers and journalists from both countries.

“The cooperation of the U.S. and Mexico is more critical now than ever,” said Rafael Fernández de Castro, director of UC San Diego’s Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies.

“In recent months, the U.S. has publicly embraced unilateral policies to cross-border challenges while Mexico has de-prioritzed security issues. As the two countries have turned away from bilateral cooperation, the complex and region-wide factors driving and exacerbating the U.S. and Mexico’s most pressing security issues have continued unabated.”

Scheduled for 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. in the campus’ Village Building 2, the conference will include a keynote speech from Alfredo Corchado, a Dallas Morning News reporter whose work on drug trafficking has earned him awards and death threats.

Other speakers will include Dan Restrepo, an adviser on Latin America to the Obama White House; Nimbe Durán of Mexico’s Interior Ministry; Guillermo Valdéz and Jorge Tello Peón, two former directors of Mexico’s Intelligence Agency; Eric Olson, a Woodrow Wilson Center researcher; and David Shirk, director of the University of San Diego’s Justice in Mexico Project.

Among the speakers on panels will be The New York Times’ Azam Ahmed; Joshua Partlow of The Washington Post; and Sandra Dibble of The San Diego Union-Tribune.

Co-sponsors of the event are UC San Diego’s School of Global Policy and Strategy ,and Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies; USD’s Justice in Mexico Project; Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México; and Southwest Airlines.